Economy · Escape from Subsistence
GDP per Capita
Eighteen hundred years stuck near $1,100 per person, then a breakout: 14× since 1820.
- $1,100 in year 1, still only $1,500 by 1820
- +36% in 1,800 yrs → 14× since 1820
- The Malthusian trap, broken
- Constant 2021 international $
For most of recorded history, growth didn’t make people richer; it just made more people. Average output per person sat near $1,100 (constant 2021 international dollars) from the Roman era to the Middle Ages, and had crawled to only $1,500 by 1820: a 36% gain in eighteen centuries. This was the Malthusian trap: any surplus was absorbed by population. The Industrial Revolution broke it. Since 1820 average world income has risen fourteen-fold to over $21,000 per person, the single largest change in ordinary human living standards ever measured. The flat handle of this hockey stick is the point: nearly everything we call modern prosperity happened in just the last two centuries.
| Year | Value | Note | Projected |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $1,100 | Subsistence baseline | |
| 1000 | $1,100 | A millennium later: unchanged | |
| 1500 | $1,300 | ||
| 1600 | $1,400 | ||
| 1700 | $1,400 | ||
| 1820 | $1,500 | Malthusian trap breaks | |
| 1850 | $1,800 | ||
| 1870 | $2,100 | ||
| 1900 | $3,100 | ||
| 1920 | $3,400 | ||
| 1940 | $4,700 | ||
| 1950 | $4,600 | ||
| 1960 | $6,000 | ||
| 1970 | $8,200 | ||
| 1980 | $9,900 | ||
| 1990 | $11,275 | ||
| 2000 | $12,781 | ||
| 2010 | $16,051 | ||
| 2015 | $17,871 | ||
| 2019 | $19,551 | ||
| 2020 | $18,812 | COVID dip | |
| 2021 | $19,876 | ||
| 2024 | $21,393 | ||
| 2025 | $21,914 |